


All the Lonely People

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-11
Updated: 2010-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-11 16:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where do they all belong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Lonely People

**Author's Note:**

> One single and three double drabbles written 13-14/10/2007 for the LiveJournal SN100 challenge #153, _Beatles Song Titles_.

**This Bird Has Flown**

All student parties, all parties anywhere, they're pretty much identical: heat, noise, cigarettes, booze, loud voices and grasping, groping hands. Dan avoids them – he's a serious student now, oh yes – but tonight his roommate wouldn't let him off the hook. "Man, live a little!" he'd said.

_I've lived_, Dan doesn't tell him. _I've lived a lot. My brother died. I don't deserve to live_.

He doesn't know himself if he believes that, or if it's only what he believes he should believe. What he does know is a foolproof way to make the pain go away – for a little while.

He wakens in a pink-washed dorm room surrounded by 'Hang in there!' kitten posters. A note scrawled in lipstick across a photograph of the fjords tells him 'Had to go – thanks!' and a dozen Xs. He shrugs, shivers, drags a blanket round his shoulders, reaches to flip on the electric fire. It sparkles, crackles, nips at his fingers; he quickly snaps it off again.

He wonders who she was, if she'll come back. He wonders whether either of them care.

Isn't it wonderful, to be young, to have the whole world in your hands? Isn't it great, isn't it _good?_

***

 

**Yesterday**

His marriage hadn't been perfect. Casey would be the first – no; the second – to admit that. Some days he and Lisa seemed to have drifted so far apart that they could have been speaking different languages. Still, he'd thought it was at least _stable_, if only for Charlie's sake.

He'd thought wrong. Something he'd said or done had tipped the balance, and now here he is. Alone.

He has no idea what that final thing was. If he knew, he'd do all that he could to take it back, to make things right.

But he doesn't. He can't. It's over.

***

 

**Drive My Car**

It's a 1969 Lamborghini, red and glossy, almost mint; its engine purrs like an ecstatic tiger. Not a typical student's car by any manner of means, but then, nothing about Dan is typical.

"My grandfather bought it for me," he explains, rapidly, as though Casey had accused him of something.

All Casey's grandfather had given him was a tendency to rheumatism in his knees. There's an imbalance here. Dan, with his looks and his charm and his old family money – Dan's had it easy, Casey thinks, and forcibly quashes the demon of envy before it can commit any lasting damage.

But Danny is generous, invariably happy to drop the keys into Casey's outstretched hand, sit back and let Casey drive. Which is more, Casey thinks, than _he_ would do.

Dan's overly cautious too, little-old-lady careful, as though the car had been his grand_mother_'s and had inherited her character traits. More than a couple of drinks in an evening, and the keys stay in his pocket. It's taxis for them then, or obliging friends' couches. Casey shrugs, accepting it – Dan's car, Dan's rules – until one cold night, very late, very drunk, he finally asks.

Dan tells him. And envy dies then.

***

 

**She Came in Through the Bathroom Window**

There _he_ was, washing his hands, mercifully zipped up and perfectly decent; and then suddenly there _she_ was, tumbling into the bathtub, all tousled black hair and rumpled skirts and long, long legs. She sat up, noticed him, grinned (not at all embarrassed), shushed him with a finger to her lips, then slipped quietly out the door. He blinked, shook his head, then made his own way out and back downstairs to rejoin the dinner party.

He was introduced formally the next morning at breakfast. She reached out her hand, looking sidelong under her lashes, half-laughing, half-entreating; he only smiled reassuringly and said he was delighted to meet her. Her father, that very eminent lawyer, and her devout, respectable mother never suspected a thing.

Thirty years on, and she's never ceased to amaze him; she surprises and delights him daily, even when they quarrel, even when he's a fool. She is the best thing that ever happened to him, the greatest gift any man could ever hope for, and Isaac blesses the day he found her.

But he is, nonetheless, relieved that, ever since that day, Esther has always entered and left whatever room she's in only by the door.

***


End file.
